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Every month, Microsoft adds new feature updates to the Xbox One platform, and an upcoming one (Which will be out around December) is going to add backward-compatibility with the Xbox 360.

Phil Spencer at the company’s E3 press conference said “Our goal is to deliver the largest games catalog ever on Xbox, and Xbox backwards compatibility allows us to do just that.’’ .

Mike Ybarra, head of the platform engineering team at Microsoft, said that Microsoft will offer “hundreds of titles by the holiday season, with hundreds more in the months to come.” Digital versions of all your Xbox 360 titles will automatically begin showing up on Xbox One, he said.

Retails discs will work as well: “Put the disc in, download the game, and you’re ready to go,” Ybarra said.

Microsoft showed off Mass Effect running on the Xbox One, but with Xbox One features, such as broadcasting, game DVR, and the ability to take screenshots or stream via the Xbox app on Windows 10. You’ll also be able to play multiplayer with your Xbox 360 friends.

And apparently all that’s required is for the developer to sign off on it. “No work is required on their part to make all of this possible,” Ybarra said.

If you’re an Xbox Preview member, you’re lucky—you’ll get an initial set of titles try out today, Ybarra said. For everyone else, there’s the holidays.

“For Xbox One, we won’t charge you to play the games you already own,” Ybarra said. That was obviously a dig at Sony, whose PlayStation Now service allows you to play PlayStation 3 games on your PlayStation 4 console, but charges you $20 per month for the service.

Why this matters: Backward-compatibility was one feature that every Xbox One gamer hoped for, but no one actually expected. Now, any Xbox One owner can take advantage of their back catalog—or jump in to older games that they may have passed over. Game developers have to be excited—Microsoft just gave its Xbox 360 lineup a jumpstart, opening those older titles up to gamers who owned a PlayStation during that generation.

Microsoft is rolling out an Xbox One update today, and it features some major improvements.

You should see a lot of changes to your Xbox One if you boot it up today. Microsoft is improving how fast your controller connects to the box and it’s adding profiles for games. The company has regularly added new features and improvements to its console since launching the Xbox One in 2013, and it’s keeping that trend going with the first major patch of 2015.

The first big improvement is to the controller. You can dive into the options and find an upgrade for the Xbox One joypad’s firmware. All you need to do is connect it with a USB cord and run the update. This will change the length of time it takes the the device to find and connect with the Xbox One from around 10 seconds to just 2 seconds.

Another major addition is game hubs. Now, just like every player has their own profile, so does every game. From these menus you can see updates about the games, clips, and leaderboards. Microsoft has wisely turned over the control of these hubs to each developer, which means that the people who make the game can share information, updates, and their favorite videos with Xbox One owners. It’s a feature that is similar to Nintendo’s Miiverse but with an extra layer of functionality.

Finally, Microsoft is making the menu panels in the interface semi-transparent so you can better see your custom background pictures. And it is adding the “trending television” to a number of Xbox One markets in Europe.

Microsoft is going the holodeck route with something called HoloLens.These are holographic glasses and they'll be coming out around the same time as Windows 10. Man, this sure looks awesome and cool and probably also janky and questionably useful! We'll find out first-hand soon though... (We hope)

Hololens is no Oculus. First, it's untethered. Everything is in the headset; that includes a CPU, a GPU, and something Microsoft is calling a Holographic Processor. HPU? Also, this isn't about throwing you into some VR screen-in-front-of-your-face cave. Hololens is about putting virtual things all over your real life, like Google Glass but somehow uglier and bigger but also better better. Exactly the experience we're hoping to see with the mysterious Magic Leap.

As a Windows 10 device, the Hololens should also be able to run any app that a Windows 10 PC or phone will be able to, so long as there's some holomagic UI programmed in. That could help make it easier for cool shit to come to these insane goggles whenever it is that they launch. For now, we're stuck with basic tech demos.

Easily one of the most popular announcements, Microsoft said that Windows 10 will be a free upgrade to anyone using Windows 7 and up for the first year. That's a huge change from the way Windows has been licensed in the past. If you have Windows 7 (which we liked!) or higher, you can upgrade to Windows 10 without paying a dime. Microsoft even confirms that once you're upgraded, you'll get support for the lifetime of the product, so this isn't a trick where you'll have to pay after the first year. Windows Phone 8.1 users will also get a free upgrade, as well.

Good. What's important about the new Windows 10?

Microsoft kicked off the consumer-focused portion of the event by talking about a continuous experience across devices. Often, there's a disruption that occurs when you move from your desktop to your phone, or your phone to your tablet. Microsoft wants to fix this with a feature called Continuum. This allows you to swap between desktop and tablet mode in convertible devices. Microsoft is also moving its mobile and desktop versions of Windows closer together so that apps work similarly across all form factors.

Microsoft also showed off how Windows 10 will behave on phones or tablets, if you use one of those devices. There are new mobile features like replying directly to notifications, a floating keyboard, and voice dictation anywhere you can pull up the keyboard.

But not only that...

Microsoft wants developers to be able to write apps once and run them on everything from Windows desktops to Xbox consoles. The company showed off a bit about how these apps will behave and be distributed. The above is an image of the Calendar app that was written for the Universal Apps platform and automatically adapts to different interfaces.

Microsoft showed off the Ribbon interface in Word as it appears in Windows phone, described as a "nearly no compromises" experience. The upside is that if you get used to a menu on one device, all the same functions should be in roughly the same place in mobile versions of the app with a slightly different layout. This is very similar to the way Android handles phone-to-tablet conversions, which dynamically adjust to different screen sizes. A welcome (And long awaited) approach.

But you guys always talk about GAMES!!!

I KNOW! And Win10 is going to hit the Xbox One!

Microsoft took a step in Steam's general direction with a brand new Xbox app for Windows 10. The app will come pre-loaded on all Windows 10 devices. For Xbox Live users, you can chat and voice chat with everyone on your friends list, see all of your games in the app, view screenshots and videos from players and so on.

The Xbox app goes even further by allowing you to record your own videos for any Windows app. Including Steam games. The company demoed the Xbox app recording a gameplay video of Sid Meier's Civilization—a version of the game that is old enough that it hasn't been updated for Windows 10 at all—with the screen recording feature. It even works with games run from Steam, so it's nice to see the service playing nicely with other gaming platforms.

Gamers have plenty of reasons to enjoy Windows 10, as well. The biggest news is that Microsoft will allow Xbox One users to stream their games to the PC, much like Steam's in-home streaming works, just in reverse. The games will run on your console and stream across your home Wi-Fi to your desktop, so you can play it in the best interface for your play style.